Abuse: Children's Commissioner Maggie Atkinson says under current smacking laws, adults and pets have better protection than children

Parents should be banned from smacking their children, according to the Children’s Commissioner for England.

Unless it is outlawed, pets and adults continue to receive better protection from the law, said Maggie Atkinson.

Parents are currently allowed to hit their child if it does not leave a serious mark and is seen as ‘reasonable chastisement’.

But Dr Atkinson claims physical chastisement is ‘abuse’ and wants parents to face criminal action for dishing it out.

The former teacher said: ‘Personally, having been a teacher, and never having had an issue where I’d need to use physical punishment, I believe we should move to ban it.

‘In law you are forbidden from striking another adult, and from physically chastising your pets, but somehow there is a loophole around the fact that you can physically chastise your child. It’s counter-evidential.’

Dr Atkinson, who has two adult step-children, said she hopes to be a ‘measured’ voice on the emotive issue.

She told the Independent: ‘It’s a moral issue. The morals are that, taken to its extreme, physical chastisement is actually physical abuse and I have never understood where you can draw the line between one and the other.

‘Better that it were not permitted. I don’t know if we’d speak out on smacking because there are a lot of other things in the queue,’ she said.